Monday, 13 January 2014

A Day At Dungeness

Harry Ramm and his Dad, took us down to dungeness for the day as there was a good number of Caspian Gulls and as Harry needed the Humes-Leaf Warbler as a lifer so i suppose it was a win win situation.

We arrived around 9:30 and our first stop of the day was Scotney Gravel pit, it was full of birds including, 300+ Grey-lag Goose, Pochards, Wigeon and load of lapwings and Herring Gull but the Highlights were 6 White-Fronted Geese and 2 Bean Geese that were picked out by Hazlo.

Great-White Egret

The next stop was the ARC pit which was also full of birds including a very Showy Great White Egret that was Partnered with a Little Egret there was also lots of duck on the pools aswell including Wigeon, Teal, Shovler, Gadwall and a very smart female Smew which was very nice to see, but the best surprise was 2 Black-throated divers which were distance but still very very nice to see

Our Final stop of the Day was the Spit and the Trapping Area, as we were driving to the car park we pulled up along the side of the road to scan the gull flocks i spoke to a group of people and they just had a Caspian Gull in a flock but they had just dispersed i spoke to another group who are very knowledgeable on his gulls so we made sure we kept in contact with him lol.

Humes-Leaf Warbler

we then went to the trapping for the Humes Warbler so we put on our wellingtons and went walking after about 10 minutes we all connected with the Warbler but Harry didn't get good enough views so we had to go relocate it so i wondered of by myself and started wondering in the bushes and having my wellingtons breached from how deep the water is, so after about 30 minutes of wondering around i then located it by it call it then it showed well giving everyone a chance to get great views of it. so once we were all happy with our views we tried for Caspian Gull one more time but were unlucky once again. but we did have views of p kittiwakes feeding also a couple of red throated diver were lingering among 100s of great crested grebes and Guillemots and Razorbills by this time the light was fading so we headed home happy with the birds we saw.

So i would just like to say thanks to Hazlo and his Dad for an amazing day birding.